Not long after the development of the World Wide Web came the development of Internet banking. By offering products and services via the Internet rather than through expensive “brick and mortar” bank branches, “online banks” could successfully offer industry-leading deposit rates and low or no fees to their customers. Unfortunately for these online banks and their customers, however, there are still many basic banking transactions, which to date require banking customers to go to a branch office. Among these transactions are depositing, and making loan payments with, paper checks. Even more unfortunate is the fact that many banks, including some that are not “online,” offer only a few (or no) branch offices. Customers of such banks are forced to either travel inordinate distances or work with other, less preferred, banks to complete their desired banking transactions.
Traditionally, banks have attempted to overcome the need for more convenient transaction processing by bearing the enormous expense of opening new branch offices in a variety of geographical locations. However, the expense of such an approach is generally prohibitive, especially to online and smaller-sized banks.
More recently, banks have made it possible for customers to have their transaction requests processed without requiring the customer to physically travel to a branch office. Under this approach, customers can mail their transaction requests via conventional U.S. mail delivery to a remote branch (or, if there are no branches, to another processing) location for processing. Each customer separately mails his or her transaction request to the bank. Typically, the cost for such mailing is paid by the bank. After several days in transit, the transaction request is received by the bank branch for processing. The bank expends its own resources to process each transaction request as it is received. Unfortunately, despite the great costs to the bank, and regardless of how well each transaction is processed, banking customers inevitably are disappointed and frustrated with this approach. Banking customers desire convenient and efficient transaction processing. Those desires are unmet due to the significant processing delays inherent in this approach.
Therefore, there is a present need for a more convenient and efficient approach to financial transaction processing. In addition, there is a need for such processing to be cost-effective. The present invention solves these needs.